Cuthbert and the Dun Cow

The magnificent cathedral at Durham owes its existence to a missing cow.

995

Durham Cathedral dominates the skyline now, in the place where Aldhun and his fellow-monks built a church in honour of St Cuthbert, and where his body still lies. This picture was taken from Mount Joy to the south east, which is where the monks came across the milk-maid who had lost her cow.

Introduction

This post is number 19 in the series Miracles of St Cuthbert

Durham Cathedral is founded on the shrine of St Cuthbert, an Anglo-Saxon saint who was Bishop of Lindisfarne in the 7th century. How he came to his last resting place in Durham at the turn of the 11th century, after over a century of wandering, is told in the story of the Dun Cow.

by Clay Lane

THE monks who cared for the coffin and body of St Cuthbert decided (this was in 995, during the reign of Ethelred the Unready) that they would take the saint back from Ripon to Chester-le-Street, where he had rested through much of the previous century.

They had reached Warden Law, not six miles from home, when their waggon suddenly stopped, and defied every effort to move it. Abbot Aldhun urged them to prayer and fasting for three days, and they were rewarded with the revelation that the coffin must be carried to Dunholm.*

Unfortunately, none of the monks had ever heard of it.

They decided to strike a westward path. After some miles, they heard a dairy-maid tell a neighbour that her cow had wandered off, and the neighbour reply that a loose cow had been seen in Dunholm. So Aldhun and his companions followed the dairy-maid to Dunholm, where they built the White Church as a new home for their beloved saint.

by Clay Lane

Based on The Memorials of Old Durham edited by Henry Leighton (1910), and originally from Simeon of Durham’s ‘Origins and Progress of this Church of Durham’ (12th century).

Next in series: Cuthbert and the Expert Witness

Dunholm is made up of ‘dūn’, an Old English word meaning a wide-topped, low hill, related to ‘dune’ and ‘down’ (as in the Sussex Downs); and ‘holmr’, an Old Scandinavian word for an island or promontory. Durham Cathedral stands on just such a low hill within a bend of the River Wear. ‘Dun’ in the phrase ‘dun cow’ is a different Old English word, meaning ‘dull brown’.

Précis

In 995, monks looking for a home for the body of St Cuthbert learnt by prayer that they must take him to Dunholm, not Chester-le-Street as they intended. They had no idea where Dunholm was, until they overhead a dairy-maid talking about it. They followed her, and Durham Cathedral now stands on the spot they chose for their church.

Sevens

Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.

Why did the monks abandon their plan of returning to Chester-le-Street?

Suggestion

Because their cart stubbornly refused to move.

Jigsaws

Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.

The monks were six miles from Chester-le-Street. Their cart suddenly refused to move. They abandoned their journey.

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